In a hospital, or similar institution, environment multiple physiological devices are often employed to collect various physiological data associated with the patients being cared for at the hospital, or similar institution. These physiological devices may include, for example, anesthesia machines, post anesthesia care units, heart monitors, and/or the like. In many instances, each physiological device may have a workstation associated therewith. The workstation, which may include, for example, a personal computer (PC), laptop, or similar computing device, may provide an interface between the caregiver (e.g., physician, nurse, etc.) and the physiological device. In particular, the workstation may enable the caregiver to enter commands to and receive data from the physiological device and/or generate and output reports based on the data received.
Applications executing on these workstations often require sets of configuration files for controlling the behavior of those applications (e.g., how they interface with the physiological machine, what type of user interface they provide, etc.). An example of such an application may be an anesthesia documentation application executing on a workstation associated with an anesthesia machine.
A different set of configuration files may be required depending upon, among other things, the workstation on which the application is executing, the type or model of the physiological device, the type of institution and/or the department of the institution within which the workstation is operating, and/or the like. Some configuration files may be shared among all workstations within a particular institution (e.g., hospital), whereas others may be workstation, physiological machine and/or department specific.
Currently, in some instances, the configuration files are stored locally on the individual workstations. This may raise issues when a configuration file is modified or updated. In particular, when the configuration files are stored locally on the workstations, each time a configuration file needs to be modified or updated, the configuration file stored locally on each workstation would likely need to be individually, and manually, updated to reflect the modification.
In other instances, in addition to being stored locally on the workstations, a version of one or more of the configuration files may be stored on a central server or similar computing system. In this instance, in order to update a configuration file, modifications may be made to the centrally located version alone. However, in order to update the configuration files stored locally on each workstation, it may be necessary to manually request that the updated configuration files be pushed to the workstations. In addition, currently, not all configuration files are capable of being pushed, and those that are, often are not pushed successfully.
A need, therefore, exists for an improved technique for providing and updating configuration files used to control applications executing on a workstation operating in association with a physiological device or machine.